Monthly Archives: February 2013

The web team is pleased to announce custom sidebars, a new site-wide feature available in WordPress, our content management system (CMS).

Administrators can choose to add one or more widgets to a sidebar that may be inserted site-wide or page by page.

Available sidebar widgets include:

A photo with a caption and web link

An HTML or text area with a header

Twitter feed

RSS feed

A custom menu of pages from your website

We will be adding more widgets over time.

Examples:
The Department of Information Technology home page contains a sidebar with two widgets. The first is an HTML area that links to a web page about identity theft, while the other is a feed from the department’s Twitter feed. Since the Twitter feed is dynamic as the department adds items to Twitter, the content will automatically update on in the widget.

Other pages on the Department of Information Technology website (e.g., our Training page) contain a site-wide sidebar with two widgets: a RSS news feed from the IT blog called The Basement, and our Twitter feed. Having the blog’s news items on every page of the department’s website greatly expands their visibility. And since these news items are coming through an RSS feed, they will automatically be updated across the site whenever items are added or changed on the blog.

Training

The web team will be providing training on using sidebars and widgets next week. A how-to use sidebars and widgets is available.

We are pleased to welcome new interns this spring from Roxbury Community College, Norman Ellison and Juan Urena. They are both enrolled in the web technology program and are working towards their associate degrees. This placement is part of a new partnership coordinated by the HSPH Office of Human Resources.

They will each work 10 hours each week and will provide web support to the HSPH community, as well as enhancing their coding skills.

Norman is a youth leader and has worked at the Youth for Prevention Action Change Through Thought, Boston MA group. Juan has a 3.8 GPA in his field of study. We welcome them to the web team.

We are pleased to welcome a new coop this spring from Roxbury Community College,Lawrence Manigault. This placement is part of a new partnership coordinated by the HSPH Office of Human Resources. Lawrence is our third coop with Hansel Ruiz and Moses Mokuolu completing assignments in the fall.

Lawrence will work 10-12 hours each week providing computer support to the community at the Helpdesk, as well as in the field, with support and training provided by our User Services team.

He is a candidate for an associate degree in information systems technology and has outstanding technical skills.

Lawrence Manigault

Please join us in welcoming Lawrence to our technical staff and to the HSPH community!

The HSPH Department of Information Technology welcomes new hire Dylan O’Connell. Dylan will work as a user support specialist in our User Services Group and will provide helpdesk, desktop, classroom, and media services support to the community. He replaces Nate Varney, who left the User Services team for a promotion with the our server team.

Dylan is a graduate of Tufts University, where he earned a bachelor of science in physics. While a student, Dylan spent 3+ years at Tufts University IT, working as a support technician at their main computer laboratories. He has extensive experience with front-line technical support, computer and printer troubleshooting, and audio-visual equipment.

We are excited about Dylan’s technical and customer service skills. He brings great support experience in an academic setting to HSPH.

Dylan O'Connell

Please join us in welcoming Dylan to our technical staff and to the HSPH community!

Interesting fact: Dylan had two outstanding internships while at Tufts. He first worked a summer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, including imaging work on satellites orbiting Jupiter. Later, he worked at Rhode Island Hospital’s Department of Radiation Oncology on smartphone applications to reduce treatment errors with safety checklists and information sharing.

Tom Gatton has been promoted from server administrator to server administrator II

Nate Varney has been promoted from senior user support associate to server administrator

Tom Gatton

Nate Varney

Tom Gatton has been at Harvard since 2006, working first for Harvard University Information Systems (now HUIT) and then Graduate School of Arts and Science (GSAS). Tom joined HSPH in 2010 and has consistently been one of the top ticket closers in IT since his arrival. He will continue work with Brian Pedranti, server manager, on maintaining HSPH’s server and storage infrastructure that now numbers more than 100 virtual machines, a disaster recovery facility, and more than 80 TB under management. Tom replaces Alex Garcia-Rangel who was promoted to a management role for Student Information System (SIS) team.

Nate Varney has been with HSPH since 2009, when he joined the User Services team. Nate was quickly promoted in 2010 to senior user support specialist. Nate, like Tom, has consistently been a top ticket closer and provided excellent support for our audio-visual infrastructure, classroom technology, and computer laboratory software imaging. Nate also worked on the production team for many events in the Forum at HSPH and Voices from the Field series. In his new server administrator role, he will be joining the server team and leaving User Services. He will be involved in a number of important projects including server upgrades, a virtual desktop pilot for instructional and administrative computing, and replacement of the Novell infrastructure. Nate replaces Tom Gattton.

We are pleased to announce that Alex Garcia-Rangel has been promoted to SIS Manager. Alex has been the interim SIS manager since mid-November on a part-time basis.

Alex has been working on the SIS project since its inception in 2008. He was on the implementation team as the technical lead. Alex has built all servers for SIS, maintains our backups, maintains our disaster recovery site, and administers other products/servers that tie into Banner (e.g., EMS and PowerFAIDS).

Alex Garcia-Rangel

Alex has been with the HSPH IT Department for more than 10 years. He first worked with our desktop team as a technician and was promoted to a server administrator position with the server team in 2006. In addition to his excellent technical skills, his customer-service focus, strong troubleshooting skills, and outstanding communication skills will be an immediate asset to the SIS team.